IT’S HIGH TIME WE PULLED TROOPS OUT OF AFGHANISTAN
Biden may have angered the Forever War faction when he announced this decision, but the rest of us, including veterans, welcome it
Twenty years is a long time.
Back in 2001, the top movies were “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” and “Shrek.” “Friends” and the second season of “CSI” dominated TV ratings. Wikipedia was launched and Apple released the first iPod.
That same year, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and ousted the Taliban leadership within months. Yet our troops are still there. There are service members now in Afghanistan who weren’t alive when the 9/11 attacks transformed the world.
Finally, an American president has decided that 20 years is enough. On Wednesday, Joe Biden announced he will withdraw all troops from Afghanistan.
Speaking from the Treaty Room of the White House, the same place President George W. Bush announced the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, Biden said, “It’s time to end the forever war.”
“I believed that our presence in Afghanistan should be focused on the reason we went in the first place,” he continued, “to ensure Afghanistan would not be used as a base from which to attack our homeland again. We did that, we accomplished that objective.”
“It's time to end America’s longest war,” the president declared. “It’s time for American troops to come home.”
Biden finally made the wise decision that Presidents Obama and Trump were unwilling to make. Trump had scheduled a pullout for May 1 of this year, a target our current president found unrealistic. Instead, our troops will be home by Sept. 11, 2021.
Most Americans would have preferred September 2011, but we’ll take what we can get.
“I know there will be many who will loudly insist that diplomacy cannot succeed without a robust U.S. military presence to stand as leverage,” Biden said. “We gave that argument a decade. It’s never proved effective.”
All told, more than 2,300 of our most valiant men and women have died in the Afghanistan war and 20,066 were wounded. Not one more drop of American blood should prop up the theories of some Pentagon planner or Foggy Bottom bureaucrat.
Not all are happy with the White
House’s belated decision.
John Bolton, the Trump National Security Adviser turned Trump critic, called Biden’s decision “reckless,” and added that “terrorists will enjoy a resurgence threatening America.” From Portland to Capitol Hill, our own citizens are doing a pretty good job threatening America themselves.
“A full withdrawal from Afghanistan is dumber than dirt and devilishly dangerous,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said in a statement. “President Biden will have, in essence, cancelled an insurance policy against another 9/11.”
We didn’t see that level of condemnation when President Trump called for withdrawal by May.
Washington Post columnist Max Boot, who never met a war he didn’t love, wrote, “Think of all the girls going to school, all the women in the workforce, all the brave soldiers and police officers fighting the Taliban despite heavy casualties, all the young entrepreneurs starting businesses, all the government officials trying to build a fragile democracy.”
Tragic stories all. But I also think of all the parents who will never see their daughter grow up, the wives who will never kiss their husband again, and the children who will never meet mom or dad.
Americans disagree with the Forever War caucus.
Two recent polls found that Americans, by vast majorities, want to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, as do our nation’s veterans. At long last, the politicians are listening.
A withdrawal in no way discounts the two decades of heroic service provided by our armed forces. Through blood and tears, they protected further attacks on American soil and gave the people of Afghanistan a rare chance for a more tolerant, more representative government. It’s not America’s fault if they refuse to take it.
Twenty years is a long time. And it’s far too long for any war.